As Warriors
by Bowles
Summary: As warriors, as soldiers, as demons, as slaves, we are compelled to fight for causes we do not believe in.


Here I am again. I promised this to you, and I'm finally delivering. Consider this my peace offering for the rather late update of _A Game of Chess_.

This is rather short, but I don't know if I'll make another one anytime soon, as I want to focus my attentions on my two long-running fics and a one-shot I've been working on for another category. But I do have ideas, rest assured. I'm not abandoning my one-shots yet.

**Disclaimer: **I do not claim any ownership of _The Bartimaeus Trilogy_, which is property of Jonathan Stroud. I own my literature and nothing else.

**As Warriors**

I don't know when my life, if you could call it that, got so screwed up. I don't know a lot of stuff. I've been around for countless millennia, but still certain revelations elude me, slipping through my fingers like sand.

Maybe it's just the winter weather that's getting me so down, although we don't have much of a winter down here, anyway. We just… exist. I've tried to put it into words but I've never succeeded, and while I'd be exhilarated to share the physical preportions of the Other Place with you, I can think of many other ways to waste my time before I am inevitably called up and enslaved once more.

I guess it's fair. I get the inhuman abilities, magicians get the ability to master me. I get breaks, right? And I am Bartimaeus; many a foolish magician has fallen prey to my wit. Eventually, maybe they'll get sick of summoning me. No doubt that Nathaniel will once more. It seems it's become a bad habit for him. He gets in trouble, he brings me to clean up his mess. I'm the friendly neighborhood janitor.

Sometimes, I just lie here thinking, "Is there any point?" Seriously. Why should I care about my existence anymore. I have no freedom. I have no choice. I must serve another lowly species for the entirety of my tenure, my only escape being death itself. But that most likely wouldn't work: I believe Bartimaeus died a long time ago. Now I'm just an empty shell of what I used to be. I'm nothing.

Wow, maybe I'm clinically depressed. I don't know why I'm even thinking about this. After all, I am a djinni, which is much better than being a human, especially those blasted magicians. Has anyone ever told them they smell worse than an animal carcass? All of those drugs they use for their summonings really linger about them, staining their scent, which would doubtlessly be bitter and tasteless, anyway.

I really had high hopes for Nathaniel, too. Well, they weren't exactly high, but they were pretty ludicrous, considering he's a magician. I saw some potential in him, a spark of decency, and a small part of me was foolishly convinced that he could break the trend, but now, I don't ever see that happening. He's completely changed. He's now John Mandrake, for Nathaniel is no more. He's a monster, and the worst part is, he's still one of the more decent of them. Most magicians are even more corrupt than he, but don't you worry, give him a little time and we'll be talking about him in the same breath as the magicians of the Dark Ages. Now _those_ were some nasty fellows. They didn't like the Stipples: the Stipples are far too mundane for them. Yikes. Makes me sweat just to think about them.

Where did this all start? Who told them that they could just exalt their sheer will over us, and take away any liberty we had previously obtained? Somewhere, someone messed up. How is this right? How is it right that one race can propel themselves above another?

We, the entities, are the accursed. We are those with no choice, without any freedom, without any liberty. Our hearts died long ago, and our souls withered away with the empires of old. Century upon century of back-breaking work has taken its toll on us, and we are those paying the price, not the magicians. They sit in luxury; we sit in pain, crippled by this unfair game we play. And so it has always been, at least as far back as I can recall.

Maybe someday, we _will _overthrow them. Maybe someday, we will gain the strength to fight them and finally win, and the balance that there seems to be so little of will be restored. Don't ask me how we are supposed to actually fight them: although they are weak and brittle, they have very powerful methods for keeping their servants in check, as I should know very well. The physical ties of this world are stronger than we are, and they are very, very firm.

I'm just fantasizing, though. I know that we will remain what we are. We will remain the lower class. We will remain what we have been for all of eternity. Nothing will change, for we cannot change anything. As warriors, as soldiers, as demons, as slaves, we are compelled to fight for causes we do not believe in. And none of this shall be any different in the foreseeable future. We will serve the magicians, and they will master us. Such is the way of the world.

Such angst me is surprising, but I guess it's had quite an amount of time to brew within my soul. I can already feel my bond to this world slipping away; I am being summoned once more. It may be the last, or there may be many more callings to the human world after this, but that doesn't make any difference. As a warrior, I will obey my general. I will fight for his army. I will spill blood for him.

As warriors, all entities, including myself, will do such for their masters, and nothing will change. For as warriors, we know that not all wars are fought with swords or magic. Some are fought with patience, and as warriors, we have that in excess.


End file.
